e one wish left her.

"What do you think of going home?" Mr. Masters asked suddenly one
evening. They had come back from a glorious ramble over the nearest
mountain, and were sitting after supper in front of the small
farm-house where they had found lodging, looking out upon the view.
Twilight was settling down upon the green hills. Diana started and
repeated his word.

"Home?"

"Yes. I mean Pleasant Valley," said the minister, smiling. "Not the
house where I first saw you. There are one or two sick people, from
whom I do not feel that I can be long away."

"You always think of other people first!" said Diana, almost with a
sigh.

"So do you."

"No, I do not. I do not think I do. It seems to me I have always
thought most of myself."

"You can begin now, then, to do better."

"In thinking of you first, you mean? O yes, I do. I will. But you think
of people you do not care for."

"No, I don't. Never. You cannot think of people you do not care for, in
the way you mean. They will not come into your head."

"How can one do then, Basil? How do _you_ do?"

"Obviously, the only way is to care for them."

"Who is sick in Pleasant Valley?"

"Nobody you know. One is an old man who lives back on the mountain; the
other is a woman near Blackberry hill."

"Blackberry hill? do you go _there?_"

"Now and then."

"But those are dreadful people there."

"Well," said the minister, "they want help so much the more."

"Help to live, do you mean? They do stealing enough for that."

"Nobody _lives_ by stealing," said the minister. "It is one of the ways
of death; and help to live is just what they want. But 'how shall they
believe on him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear
without a preacher'?"

"And do you _preach_ to them in that place?"

"I try."

"But there is no church there?"

"When you have got anything to do," said the minister, with a dry sort
of humourousness which belonged to him, "it is best not be stopped by
trifles."

"Where do you preach, then, Basil?"

"Wherever I can find a man or a woman to listen to me."

"In the houses?" exclaimed Diana.

"Why not?"

"Well, we never had a minister in Pleasant Valley like you before."

"Didn't you?"

"I don't believe anybody ever went to those people to preach to them,
until you went."

"They had a good deal of that appearance," Mr. Masters assented.

"But," Diana began again after a short pause, "to go back; Basil, you
do not _